


The More We Change

by DontTrustLoserCandy



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Fluff and Angst, Identity Porn, M/M, Trans Male Character, kind of, the angst is mostly Yuuri tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontTrustLoserCandy/pseuds/DontTrustLoserCandy
Summary: Katsuki Yuri doesn't expect to meet famous actor and teen crush Victor Nikiforov ever again.So of course, he does.(It's an awkward situation when your life-long idol doesn't recognize you after ten years apart and transitioning.)
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 2
Kudos: 116





	The More We Change

**Author's Note:**

> Found this among my old fics (2017, dear lords) and went 'ah fuck it', so here you go.  
> Enjoy.
> 
> (note: yes I wrote Yuuri's name as 'Yuri' here, for the purposes of general identity porn fuckery lmao)

Yuri hasn't heard that voice in over ten years, but he still recognizes it in a heartbeat.

(That's a lie. Yuri heard that voice five hours ago, rewatching his favorite Nikiforov movie for the nth time and ignoring sleep with the stubbornness of the anxious insomniac.)

As it is, his heartbeat in this case tries to promptly escape his body through his chest.

"Mari! It's been so long!"

Mari turns, and Yuri considers running for his life for a second before he also turns around.

And oh. Oh no.

"Victor, it's nice to see you." Mari says, calm as ever and not like she's standing in front of Victor Nikiforov and all that it entails.

Yuri doesn't know how Victor manages to look even more radiant in person than in screen, but everything seems _brighter_ about him and wow.

The panic running through his veins and leaving him frozen is almost worth seeing Victor like this. Again. Like this.

_Seeing_ Victor, period.

"How long has it been now? You were still taller than me last we saw each other!" Victor laughs, sounding amazed, and Yuri thinks he could die right there by cold sweat illness and be okay with it. Then Victor notices him, and Yuri goes three degrees colder, muscles frozen. "Oh, hello! And you are...?"

Mari gives him a look, a silent question, but he's too frozen to really take the offer of help. Instead, he reverts back to becoming a cue ball answering machine.

"Y-Yuri." This is it, this is when he realizes...

"Oh! How funny, I already know a Yuri!" Victor laughs. "Although he's much more, hmm, let's say spirited. And loud."

"I...see," Yuri can feel Mari's frown from there, but he silently prays she won't speak up.

He tries to tell himself it's okay, instead. It's been years, of course Victor would've forgotten, Yuri isn't...

"And then there's another Yuri I also know," Victor adds, voice turning...fonder. "Although I haven't seen her in a long time...which reminds me, Mari!" Victor brightens up again, turning cheerful and blinding in the span of a second. "How is Yuri doing? How have you been?"

Mari doesn't laugh, but the smirk is already enough cackling for her. The mirth is obvious in her eyes.

"Yuri is doing fine," she says, and gives Yuri a look that's both completely smug older sister sneer and quiet reassurance. "Taller nowadays. Not as tall as you, though."

"Really?" Victor says, like the concept tickles him, and Yuri blinks at him. "Is she around right now?"

"Yeah, you could say that. But if you want to know more about Yuri, you could just ask him, you know?" Mari says, smirk growing, and Yuri has a moment of unbridled panic he barely manages to push down before he jumps between them screaming 'no!' at the top of his lungs.

Then Victor looks at him, following Mari's lazy finger-pointing, and Yuri considers screaming anyways.

"Oh!" Victor says, eyes lightening up in comprehension, and then dulling in something like disappointment. Yuri vaguely feels like crying. "Are you Yuri's boyfriend, then?"

Mari _does_ laugh this time. Loudly, at that, which gives Yuri a moment to try to decipher that while Victor sends his sister a confused look.

"I- no." Yuri finally answers, coughing before repeating himself louder, Mari still laughing in the background. "No, I'm not- I'm not Yuri's boyfriend."

"Oh! Best friend, then?" Victor asks, looking much more cheerful than before, and Yuri stares at him.

"Something...like that, I guess," Yuri says when Victor's eyebrows go up at his silence. He doubts 'I'm actually my own arch-nemesis' is a socially acceptable answer.

"It's great to meet you then, Yuri!" Victor smiles, clasping his hand in a handshake before Yuri can begin to make heads and tails of Victor's expression, and then continues, "I'm Victor!"

"I know," Yuri says, brain still somewhere between being a particularly slow automaton and repeating the obvious.

Victor's face seems to shift, smile falling for the smallest of instants before it comes back, different and wrong.

Yuri's familiar with that smile from his posters, but he didn't think it'd make him so uncomfortable to see in the flesh.

No, Yuri corrects him, he didn't think it'd make him so uncomfortable to see in the flesh _with how Victor looked before._

It's in that moment that it fully sinks that Victor Nikiforov, movie star of Yuri's dreams and childhood friend/crush for one wild summer, doesn't recognize him at all.

To Victor, Yuri is a _stranger_.

The thought sinks to his stomach, clacking like a stone in shallow waters, and Yuri jerks his hand away from Victor's, breaking eye-contact.

Mari, bless her, quickly jumps to the rescue and starts talking with Victor, mostly asking the right questions to get him going on his own, and definitely hits the jackpot when she mentions Victor's poodle. Then off he goes, talking about Makkachin, how big and calm and adorable she still is, and how much she "misses Yuri and her little poodle."

Yuri, seeing the opening, eventually leaves to hide (although he stays for a few stories about Makkachin. He's been missing the good doggo terribly, even with Vicchan at his side) and spends the rest of their vacation day holed up in a cat cafe, covered in a purring mass of bodies. Mari, ever kind, doesn't ask about the cat hair.

(Yuri doesn't correct Victor on his mistake, and he breathes safer knowing they won't see each other again. The Yuri Victor knew is nothing but a memory but like this, he can still keep that memory whole, untouched by Yuri's less-than-stellar reality.

He tries to tell himself he's glad for it.

The Tokio Incident, as he calls it, is and will remain an outlier.

Except it doesn't.)

Barging into the onsen after being told by his chipper father that _Victor was staying with them_ is probably not the best choice of options, but Yuri has never been known to be _rational_ during his fits of panic. So in he goes, all the way to the outdoors hot springs where a 'Yuri!' automatically greets him at his scream of 'Victor?!'

Then Victor seems to take him in, blinking, and his expression drops some, turning politely cheerful.

"Oh, Yuri! I didn't know you were at the onsen too!" Victor looks him up and down, and Yuri tries not to squirm. "Are you taking a bath? I thought clothes weren't allowed inside."

The entirely too uncomfortable realization of his actions dropkicks him from behind.

"They aren't," Yuri says, automatically, and calmly walks the way he came from, feeling his spirit slowly rise from his body and leave this world behind. His socks are wet. "I- I'll be going now."

He keeps his eyes away from the judgment the patrons must be dolling on him, and ignores whispers about _America_ and _forgotten manners_.

By the time he finally drags himself down to the kitchen, driven by hunger and the black hole of self-pity, his socks are dry and he feels less like the walking dead.

So of course, he walks into someone.

"Sorry, sorry," Yuri says, bowing frantically, and freezes when a hand touches his shoulder.

"Yuri, no need to apologize, I bumped into you," Victor says, sounding amused, and Yuri's face feels like he's either going to combust or throw up. 

"I- still, I should've-" Victor touches his lips, one quick tap, and Yuuri snaps his mouth shut, brain blank and internally screaming.

"None of that, we all make mistakes," Victor says, winking, and Yuuri feels his face _burning_. "Now, I was looking for you anyways, so this is really lucky." a laugh, and then his eyes sparkle. "So, tell me about Yuri! How's she been these past years? Are you close? Does she have a boyfriend? And how are you, on that line."

Yuuri blinks at him.

"You...want to know about Yuri? Katsuki Yuri?"

"Yes! We used to be good friends when we were younger, I've been missing her terribly these past years," Victor explains cheerfully, unaware that Yuri's heart is going into overdrive with every word. Good friends. _Missing terribly_. "I tried to ask mama Katsuki, but she just said I should talk to you? I'm guessing Yuri doesn't live in the onsen anymore, no?"

"I...something like that, I guess," Yuri says, slowly, and drops his eyes to Victor's feet. A flash of painting each other's fingernails comes to mind, and he almost chokes on the sudden feeling of loss. "What...do you want to know? About Yuri?"

"Everything, of course," Victor says, something odd in his voice, and Yuri keeps his eyes to the ground and doesn't dare look up, afraid his face will mirror the pain in his chest and blow his cover. "Or at least everything you can tell me."

"I..." Yuri licks his lips, and takes a deep breath. The right thing right now would be to come clean. His parents have apparently subtly nudged Victor to him, letting him make the decision by himself, but Yuri is still...hesitant.

Terrified, more likely.

He doesn't know what kind of memories Victor has of a fourteen years old Yuri, soft and quiet and long-haired, with glasses too big for his face and a compulsive drive to run or dance away his problems even worse than nowadays, but Yuri knows it wouldn't live up to the real Yuri.

It rarely does, all that potential everyone talked about, wasted.

"Please," Victor says, touching one of Yuri's shoulders, and he looks up at both the touch and the odd tone in his voice. Victor licks his lips, utterly distracting. "I can sign you an autograph, if you want?"

Yuri freezes.

He takes one, two steps back, distantly noticing Victor's hopeful expression fall as their physical contact is broken. He takes a breath, too heavy and too light in his lungs at the same time, and barely manages an "I'll think about it" before he's turning around and leaving, walking as fast as he can. Through the onsen, past his confused mother and sister, out in the open.

He runs, and doesn't think, and doesn't feel until his lungs are burning in the freezing night air.

He runs.

Victor is...strangely subdued the next time they meet, in his own way. It still doesn't take away from the fact that Victor practically hunted him down after Yuri did his best to try to avoid him.

"I apologize if I said something wrong," Victor says, staring Yuri down like he's trying to crack him open and look inside, and Yuri almost bristles at it.

Victor used to be able to read him like an open book, and Yuri opened himself up in turn. Bitterly, he finds himself missing being fourteen and miserable.

"You didn't," Yuri lies, looking to the side, considering if it would be too rude to push Victor aside so he can walk down the hallway in peace, to hide away under his bedsheets. He only left for water and some food. How Victor found him, he doesn't know. "It's dumb, I'm sorry-"

" _Yuri_ ," Victor says, voice disapproving, and the way he says his name is so familiar Yuri feels whiplash for a second. "I did something wrong. If your reaction hadn't been enough to realize that, mama and Mari's reactions to when I told them were clear enough. I just want to know what I did wrong, please, and how to fix it."

Yuri bites the inside of his cheek, and frowns to himself. It's not Victor's fault Yuri is a coward who can't come out to the open. Victor thinks he's just a fan, a friend of Yuri Katsuki, the _girl_ , so of course he'd treat him as such.

Victor sighs at his silence.

"Look, I'm...not good with these things," Victor says, vaguely pointing at them both, and Yuri thinks _what, how to talk with people?_ "I said something wrong, I gather that much. Did...was it the autograph thing?"

Victor's voice is subdued, oddly fragile, and Yuri lets out a gust of breath and nods.

"It was."

"I thought you were a fan," he almost sounds embarrassed, and Yuri shakes his head.

"I am. I just...I don't want you to bribe me to tell you about someone." _About myself_ , Yuri bites down.

"Oh." 

Yuri looks up, making eye contact with Victor, and blinks at the genuine sheepishness he sees.

"That was insensitive of me, wasn't it?"

"A little," Yuri nods, looking away again, "although I shouldn't have reacted so badly. I'm sorry for running away."

"It's okay, it reminded me of someone else I know. It's...it's okay."

Yuri's eyes flit up to Victor's face, and he blinks at the strange, almost longing expression in his face. Then he blinks, and Victor's face is back to showing politeness and a hint of remorse. 

Yuri shakes his head, sure he just imagined it.

"You...want to know about Yuri, right?" He says slowly, trying out the words, and Victor nods. "I could tell you some things, if you want." 

"Please," Victor smiles, something soft and genuine in the curve of his lips. "I can't wait to see her again, but I'd love to know more about her while I'm here."

Yuri nods, and tries not to blush.

He can do this, even if the Yuri Victor wants doesn't exist anymore. He'll just have to keep his pronouns straight.

He can do this.

He's missed Victor so much, too.

Somehow, what starts as afternoons talking about "Yuri" and poodles and stories about America turn into days spent together doing everything from relaxing in the onsen to eating together to walking their dogs. Yuri soon finds out that Victor is staying right next to his room, in an empty banquet room reused because all the rooms were full, and he feels strangely grateful that he didn't move into his current room until he turned fifteen. The man had already given him a strange look or two watching him interact with his family and with Vicchan, but mentioning that Yuri worked in the onsen and stayed there meanwhile had seemed to be explanation enough.

It hadn't been a lie, but it had tasted sour all the same. And as time had passed and he'd slowly realized his childhood crush was...not precisely dying at the reality of Victor, Yuri had started to feel increasingly worse about hiding his secret.

By the time Tanabata comes, he knows he has to tell Victor the truth. For one, because his feelings for the man have been getting out of control and he fears crossing some line on accident, stepping into something while Yuri is still keeping such a lie on Victor.

For another, he's noticed Victor growing increasingly subdued about Yuri's "disappearance", culminating in a night with one too many cups of alcohol that had lead to Victor clinging against Yuuri, voice soft and miserable as he asked if Yuri was avoiding him, not even coming to visit her family yet. Asking Yuri if he hated him.

He'd almost told him, right there and then, but Victor had just clung tighter and Yuri had ended up rocking him to sleep, both less than sober and half undressed. He still isn't sure how he'd carried Victor all the way back to his room and into his bed, but at least he'd woken up facing the other direction and by being kneed in the face by the sleeping man.

Not one of his best moments.

Two weeks later, Tanabata comes, and Yuri decides he'll tell Victor that night, before they leave together to the festivities.

When they leave Yuri hasn't told him.

When they try to catch fish among other games, Yuri hasn't told him.

When they walk around the stands, buying food and eating it with the gusto of someone giving themselves a day off from their stringent diets, Yuri hasn't told him, and doesn't tell him.

And then, before he realizes it, they're sitting in a semi-deserted hill, away from the bustling festivities as they wait for the fireworks to start, and Yuri still hasn't told him. The laughter and the smiles and the comfortable conversations they've hold all night rest soft over them, blanketing them, and Yuuri looks at Victor at his side. Victor looks back, and smiles at him before looking up at the night sky.

"I had a lot of fun today," Victor says, softly. "Last time I went to Tanabata...I had a lot of fun too, and I was a bit worried that it wouldn't hold up to the memory but...it was great. Thank you, Yuri."

Victor smiles at him, his hand squeezing Yuri's, and before he can overthink it he turns it around, wrapping their fingers together. Victor blinks, smile growing slightly wider, and both look up as the first bang of the fireworks sounds, painting the sky in color.

Yuri remembers this, remembers being fourteen and watching the fireworks with Victor, grasping his hand and almost clinging to him after his previous anxiety attack. He remembers feeling warm, skin still tingling from Victor's kiss to his forehead while he'd been gasping for air, and looking up at Victor's face, hair bursting in color with the sky and thinking _oh._

Now, Yuuri looks at him again, and feels his heart pick up just like it did then, his affections only deeper after all this time.

Then Victor looks down, and his eyes shine red and green as the sky keeps exploding with light.

"You're really close with Yuri, aren't you?" Victor says, eyes brightening and darkening with every firework that goes off and disappears, a Kaleidoskope of color that leaves him a bit dizzy. Yuri frowns at him, confused. "You share a lot of mannerism with her," Victor explains, shrugging and looking down. "I've noticed."

Yuri breathes, listening to the fireworks whistle as Victor's face is bathed in light and shadow successfully, feeling both not quite there and extremely aware of his every muscle, of the warmth of Victor's hand around his. Extremely aware of Victor's expression, the sadness and conflict and something like guilt hiding in the shadow.

Yuri licks his lips, uncaring if the fireworks devour his words. He'll just have to say them again, until Victor knows.

"I'm Yuri," he says, instead of the speech and long winded explanation he's been mentally preparing for weeks. "Victor, I'm Yuri. I'm a boy."

Victor looks at him, frowning in confusion.

"Yes?"

"My full name is Yuri Katsuki."

The fireworks stop, a last one wheezing along with Yuri's words, but Victor seems to hear him anyways, eyes going wide.

Then, silence.

"...What?" Victor asks, voice soft and confused, and Yuri takes a deep breath.

"We went together to Tanabata too, last time. You kept failing to catch any fish, and then you were impressed because a six years old kid caught one in his first try. You tried to ask for tips, in English," Yuri says, voice turning fond and dry at the memory of the child asking him about his 'weird friend'.

"Then you tried to communicate through mime, saying 'fish, fish' again and again. Badly, at that. In the end we had to leave because we were taking up space in front of the stand." Yuri smiles at the memory, and sighs.

"You wanted to see everything and kept jumping from place to place, and I...got anxious, from all the people around us, from feeling I was being stared at. I had a panic attack." he breathes, soothing the echoes of anxiety, looking at the sky, dark and speckled with stars. "You helped me calm down, although you had no idea what you were doing. You even kissed my forehead. And when we saw the fireworks, we were holding hands, too. It was one of the happiest days of my life." 

"Yuri..." Victor starts, and Yuri presses his hand, relieved Victor hasn't pulled away yet. Victor stays silent.

"I...was afraid, to tell you it was me. You had an image of me I...haven't identified with for a long time, maybe never identified with, and I was scared you'd be disappointed with, well, the reality of me. I'm not a cute girl, or a small and awkward teenager who was embarrassingly obvious about his crush. I'm just me. I am a boy, a man."

"Yuri, I could never be disappointed in you," Victor says, something deep and sincere in his voice, and Yuri swallows. "Not for this, never for this. I thought you were avoiding me because you'd grown disenchanted with me, or my career, but...you were always there, huh?"

"I'm sorry for not telling you before. I didn't want you to feel like that."

"And I'm sorry if something I did or said made you think I wouldn't accept you just because you're not exactly what I thought." Victor says, and then he smiles. "You know, you ended being much better than that."

"I- really?" 

"Yes. You look happier now than you did then, although I know by now you don't feel satisfied working in the onsen." Victor smiles at him, and Yuri leans his face in his knees, humming.

"It's work," he shrugs.

Victor hums.

"I realize now that you told me about going to America to study dance, but you never told me how that went." Yuri curls tighter into himself, only the hand that links them together staying away, and he feels Victor's stare. "You don't need to tell me, if you don't want to."

Yuri shakes his head with a soft 'no', and Victor presses his hand.

"You know, you're not that different from when you were fourteen," Victor starts, and Yuri looks up to him, ready to argue. Victor smiles, and Yuri closes his mouth. "You haven't changed that much, apart from the changes that come with growing up. I mean...you're not a different person now, just because you're a guy. You haven't changed that much, it's just that world changed how it saw you."

Victor's free hand finds Yuri's cheek, caressing it softly, and Yuri closes his eyes, shoulders sagging with a relief so deep it makes his throat tighten.

"It feels right, now," Yuri whispers.

"I'm glad."

Yuri opens his eyes, looking at Victor's, and feels the world slow down as share twin smiles.

"So, you had a crush on someone as a teen?" Victor asks, breaking the moment, and Yuuri tries to hide his face with his own free hand and Victor's, to his amusement.

"You didn't notice? I was awful at hiding it." Yuri mumbles, listening to Victor's laughter with something between embarrassment and giddy happiness.

"I didn't. Was it someone I knew?" Victor asks, and then his eyes widen. "Oh! Was it Yuko? You always talked about her with a flush in your face."

"I- no, it wasn't Yuko," Yuri says, chuckling, remembering thinking himself the same thing. "That had been more of a platonic crush. In America they call them squishes."

"Squishes," Victor repeats, raising his eyebrows, and Yuri smiles. "Okay, was it someone I knew then? Someone I know now?"

"Ah..." Yuri says, looking away as his face flushes before pressing his lips and shaking his head.

"Yuri!"

He smiles at Victor's pout and puppy eyes, and feels his face flushing as he nods once.

"It...was you. I had a crush on you," he says, as fast as he can, hides away his face again. 

The silence stretches, and Yuri can feel Victor blinking at him.

"Oh." The man finally says, and Yuri braces himself despite of everything he knows about Victor, about them. "That...is funny."

Yuri tenses.

"How so?"

"Well, for one I...had a crush on you too." Yuri looks up, eyes wide, and he stares at Victor's flushed face. Embarrassed.

"You did?" He repeats, baffled.

"Yes. I knew you were four years younger, and my career was still at a point where it consumed my life, hence the vacation, and I didn't...I didn't want to ruin what we had, didn't want my life," he waves his hand vaguely towards the distance, and Yuri nods. _The life of stardom_ , "to ruin you. Paparazzi, overzealous fans...Tanabata made me realize I wouldn't be able to protect you, not long enough, so I never acted on my feelings."

"Oh," Yuri says, this time.

"We weren't ready."

"We weren't," Yuri nods, and smiles reassuringly at Victor's still guarded, hesitant face, raising his free hand to hold Victor's cheek in answer.

Victor smiles, a thousand silent words passing through them in that moment, and their faces come closer until their forehead touch, leaning on each other.

Yuri breathes out, and then breathes Victor in, their breathing syncing until they're breathing together, eyes closed, hands rubbing absentmindedly over each other's cheeks, hands, skin.

When their lips come together, all that Yuri can think is _home_.

And then, _I love you._


End file.
